The Top 1 Percent among Nonprofits Doing Quite Well, Thank You

October 12, 2011; Source: Bloomberg BusinessWeek | The world’s richest college, Harvard University, announced the third-highest fundraising haul in its history, raising $639 million last year. Gifts increased 7 percent overall, and gifts for current use, which have been emphasized over the past year, increased 12 percent. But even these impressive numbers were dwarfed by the growth in Harvard’s endowment, which swelled by $4.4 billion to $32 billion in fiscal year 2011. The rich get richer even amongst us nonprofits?. .—Ruth McCambridge

Ruth is Editor in Chief of the Nonprofit Quarterly. Her background includes forty-five years of experience in nonprofits, primarily in organizations that mix grassroots community work with policy change. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Ruth spent a decade at the Boston Foundation, developing and implementing capacity building programs and advocating for grantmaking attention to constituent involvement.